Hole in the floor

Hole in the floor
Originally uploaded by Lenny & Meriel.

So they made me break a hole in the floor of the guest room.
Strangely it looks like a small fireplace from our old house (just to give an indication of the squalour in which we use to live).
The hole is to ensure that we will have decent enough footings for the structural elements of the build - which of course we don't. But apparently it's not a problem, or so they say ...

The destruction has begun!

The first hole
Originally uploaded by Lenny & Meriel.

The structural engineers needed to see what our house is built on. So we dug a big hole. Sadly Jonah was at school and missed the (w)hole thing.

Apparently it was good news - it just looked like a big muddy hole to us but we won't argue.

The structural engineers have spoken

So we went to the architect's for a meeting about what the structural engineers had said concerning the facilitation of the structural aspects of the build (does that make sense? it's got an awful lot of long words in it). The upshot of which was that the plans can pretty much stay as they are. We were previously concerned that the span of the main living area on the ground floor would be too large and that we would then need some structural pillars in the center of the room, but as it turned out, we don't. We were also slightly concerned about the roof structure, because:
a) The structural supports added might have meant that we would need to move the walls around a bit, thus changing the size of the rooms (not what we wanted). And
b) Most of the roof timbers would have to be replaced, adding to the cost of the build.
But as it turned out, we needn't have worried here on either count.
As a result of the living area span we are looking at a huge beam going across the front of the house - but it might actually look quite nice, we've decided